You Can Sense the Pundit’s Frustration by Newt Gingrich

Received this in an email today and thought it worthwhile to repost. Gingrich wrote it and it expresses the sense of outrage felt by many Americans. It also calls to light the continued misdirect that often plays itself out from the Obama Administration.

The recent (and ongoing) attacks on American embassies in Libya and elsewhere occurred on September 11th. As Newt states, even though the attacks were blamed on some ridiculous film (that allegedly incensed Muslims because it called out their prophet – Muhammad – as a pedophile and more), the truth of the matter is that if it had not been the film, anything would have worked to be used as an excuse to riot, causing mayhem, death, and destruction.

Look, I’m NOT in favor of people deliberately going out of their way to verbally assault Islam. Presenting facts is one thing (though Muslims get easily bent out of shape when the facts are presented since they don’t believe many of the facts about Muhammad or the history of Islam), but to do something that intentionally puts Muslims on the defensive is not a good idea. It’s bad form. As authentic Christians, it is our job to present the gospel to them. As difficult as that might be at times, we are not exempt from that responsibility. We might become angered as was Jonah, but that also does not excuse our unwillingness to evangelize all people, including Muslims.

On the anniversary of the September 11th attacks, Muslims rioted and did what they could to destroy U.S. embassies. They wound up killing several people in the process. To them, this is acceptable because they believe Allah finds it acceptable. There is no sense of remorse associated with these terrible acts of injustice because they believe Allah is pleased.

Unfortunately, our own man in the Oval Office pretends that these are one-off acts of vandalism. He refuses to see or acknowledge publicly the whole picture and as long as he continues to do that, Islam wins the day. They do so by becoming more empowered because it appears to them that no one is willing to stand up to them. Islam will not back down until it comes up against an immoveable force; a force that they will be forced to bounce off of and so far, there seems to be no one who is willing to do that. Our own Mr. Obama has seen to that by doing everything in his power to neuter our armed forces, even removing ammunition from the Marines. While he himself did not authorize that, it was done under his watch. Since he is Commander-in-Chief, one would expect him to either know about or authorize anything that affects his troops.

“According to NightWatch, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson ‘did not permit US Marine guards to carry live ammunition, according to USMC blogs. Thus she neutralized any US military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy’.

“‘In this respect,” NightWatch added, “she did not defend US sovereign territory and betrayed her oath of office. She neutered the Marines posted to defend the embassy, trusting the Egyptians over the Marines’.” [1]

So we have an individual who is ostensibly under the umbrella of the Obama Administration, forbidding the U.S. Marines from having live ammunition; ammunition that WOULD have been used to curtail the events that occurred just a few days ago. Something smells.

At any rate, here is what Newt has to say and unless you’re a liberal, Socialist, Marxist, or just an average “leftie,” it’s worth reading.

“The self-righteous indignation that the punditry directed at Mitt Romney this week shows that he touched a nerve in his statements on the events in Egypt. You can sense the frustration. The elites are vaguely aware that their ‘enlightened’ posture toward the threat of Islamism is out of step with the views of the American people. Hence the outrage with Romney, totally out of proportion to the real world, as he said what most Americans were thinking.

With an angry mob at the gates of the U.S. embassy in Cairo on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks—ostensibly inflamed by an obscure, anti-Islamic film, the embassy released a groveling statement apologizing for “continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” The “protesters” proceeded to breach the embassy walls, tear down the American flag, and raise an Al Qaeda banner. The embassy then reiterated its earlier statement, all before anything was known about the Libyan consulate. The White House and the State Department later condemned the attacks but also tripped over themselves to denounce the obscure, stupid film they had nothing to do with and of which no one had ever heard.

Two American embassies are attacked on September 11 – and, we later learned, the four Americans killed – and the immediate reaction of our leaders and the press is to cast blame on a ridiculous film for inciting the violence.

Thus while condemning the violence, they give legitimacy to the grievance.

As I wrote in an op-ed at Politico yesterday, our elites are determined to analyze each outbreak of Islamist aggression in isolation – as though they’re inexplicable acts of random violence.

The fact is, if it wasn’t the film, it would have been something else.

That’s because it is not “senseless violence,” as President Obama and Secretary Clinton described in their statements. They are attacks in a war that our enemies openly confess to waging. And as accounts of the assault on the Benghazi consulate make clear, they are sophisticated and highly coordinated.

Eleven years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it’s a tragedy that our leaders refuse to treat seriously our enemies’ motives.

This is nothing new.

Attributing the attacks in Libya and Egypt to a proximate excuse (such as this hateful film) rather than confronting the true nature of our enemies is nothing new for the Obama administration.

Major Nidal Hassan was the Army psychiatrist who shot dozens of people at Fort Hood in 2009 while screaming “Allahu Akbar,” handed out business cards describing himself as a “soldier of Allah,” and sent emails to Anwar al-Awlaki, the American later killed by a drone attack in Yemen as an Al Qaeda member. President Obama after the shooting warning Americans against “jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts.”

Following the attempted Times Square car bombing, the administration jumped to the conclusion that the would-be bomber acted alone. Press reports speculated that the young man had simply cracked under financial pressures. Mayor Michael Bloomberg even suggested the bomber could be an American upset with Obamacare. The administration later admitted that the Pakistani Taliban was responsible for the attack.

In his first statement after the attempted Christmas Day bombing in 2009, President Obama jumped to the conclusion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was an “isolated extremist” – only to find later that the attack was organized by Al Qaeda in Yemen.

This intellectual dishonesty is par for the course for an administration that upon entering the White House declared that the “War on Terror” would now be called an “overseas contingency operation,” and whose Secretary of Homeland Security made a point to refer to acts of terrorism as “man-caused disasters.”

This is the mindset, the lead from the top down throughout this administration, that causes an American embassy in Egypt to issue a statement apologizing for the free speech of an irrelevant, unknown filmmaker as a mob outside prepares to breach the walls and hoist an Al Qaeda flag. Mitt Romney was right: it is disgraceful. [2]